1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a handwriting processing apparatus and method suitable for processing, e.g., a document file that records a handwriting trail.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 9-91424 and 8-69455 disclose apparatuses for searching handwritten characters.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-91424 relates to an apparatus comprising a means for inputting stroke data, and a search stroke setting means for setting, as a search target, a key stroke which is discriminated from a plurality of input strokes. This apparatus further comprises a search means for searching for the key stroke based on the input stroke and, based on the search key stroke, specifying group information containing the found key stroke from a plurality of pieces of group information stored in a storage means.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-69455 relates to an apparatus for recognizing, e.g., a symbol in a document based on the similarity between the symbol and character pattern information registered in a dictionary. This apparatus comprises a means for storing, as a recognition result, a plurality of character codes obtained in correspondence with, e.g., a symbol that has a low similarity and should be rejected ordinarily.
In the search apparatus described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-91424, a key stroke serving as a search key is set from input trail stroke data by the search stroke setting means. For this reason, to set a certain stroke in a document file as a key stroke, the setting operation is necessary each time. Any stroke without the setting is excluded from the search targets. It is therefore necessary to set effective strokes in advance as search keys, resulting in inconvenience for users.
The search apparatus described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-69455 obtains a recognition result for a pattern with a low similarity to dictionary data so it cannot be expected to obtain the same recognition result every time. Depending on the similarities between character patterns and the shapes of symbols, even different symbols may exhibit the same combination of a plurality of character codes as recognition results. Hence, no practical search result can be expected.
In addition, the conventional search apparatuses cannot take into account information (e.g., the size and writing pressure upon input) unique to a handwriting when performing a search.